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- The Central Bank of Thailand is exploring the option of digitizing its national currency Thai Baht
- DeFi industry has been making waves due to its record-breaking performance in 2020
- The proof-of-concept project such as using CBDC for financial transactions with large companies seems to be in the final stage
The Central Bank of Thailand is exploring the option of digitizing its national currency Thai Baht. The Central Bank is looking at smart contracts and DeFI for its implementation and the process could soon be wrapped up soon. As per Vijak Sethaput, Senior Developer at Bank of Thailand, the digital currency project named Intanon was already in process with the CBDC.
Sethaput, revealing the details during a global meet at the Official Monetary and Financial Institutions Forum, informed that the central bank is keeping track of recent developments in the DeFi industry at the same time looking to explore its own version which would suit as per Thailand’s needs. For that, customer identification and privacy are the two main issues around decentralized finance that Sethaput reckons the Central Bank has to solve.
The comments come at a time when the DeFi industry has been making news due to its record-breaking growth this year, with firms over the world increasingly pouring money into the crypto sector.
Insanon Plan Snapshot
Insanon is a joint project of the Bank of Thailand and eight major financial institutions in Thailand that aims to improve the financial infrastructure of the country, investigate the potential of distributed ledger technology ( DLT), and repeat demonstration tests divided into three phases.
From the development of a prototype of instant gross payment to functionality evaluation using smart contracts and the demo experiment of cross-border payment at each stage, we have generally progressed and gained a lot of information. Currently, the proof-of-concept project such as using CBDC for financial transactions with large companies seems to be in the final stage.
Challenges in the Implementation of project
Explaining the challenges that one could face during the implementation of the project, Sethaput explained that it could get entangled in the legal conflicts that could affect the progress of the project. He also pointed out that a major obstacle to widespread adoption is that many people still have doubts about new technologies.
Meanwhile, another panellist at the Forum Sky Guo, founder of the blockchain platform Cypherium was of the view that the Central Bank can use CBDCs in a decentralized financial (DeFi) model, which allows immediate payment of interest. Regarding the price fluctuations when it comes to virtual currencies, Guo was of the view that it can be made further secure by collateralizing assets such as real estate and stocks.
